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In today's SmartKnowledgeU_Vlog_005, we discuss why an intelligent investment strategy is impossible without incorporation of market & banker fraud analysis

If you find that you are pointing to yourself on 5 or more of the bullet items below... please delete your Twitter account immediately.

As QE3 came to an end, World Stocks plunged back to economic reality before The Fed's Jim Bullard promised 'moar QE' if things get really bad. Well things have got really bad... JPMorgan's Global Manufacturing PMI just dropped to its lowest since July 2013.. and the 'wedge' between economic reality and market perception is closing rapidly.

In an unprecedented move to stem the tsunami of migrants entering Europe, Hungary has decided to stop all trains at Budapest main train station to stop refugees - most of them from conflict areas such as Syria - from entering the EU onwards to Austria and Germany. For now, there are 1000s of refugees waiting at the station, with entrances blocked by police.

Is September 2015 going to be one of the most important months in modern American history?

Construction spending grew at 13.7% YoY in July. It has only grown at a faster pace than that once - at the very peak of the idiocy in Q1 2006. So that got us wondering... how is it that Construction Spending is surging as Lumber Prices are collapsing? (unless homes are now made of Twitter share certficates). The answer is simple - lag... and we have seen this picture before...

For the last few years, US equity traders have become conditioned to expect the miraculous arrival of some heavy-handed levitation in stock markets as 330pmET rolls by. This became ubiquitous enough to inspire a Twitter account. Well, it appears the Chinese have learnt a thing or two from the American manipulators... behold China's 2pm Ramp Capital at work.

Following China's official PMI print at a 3-year low, Caixin's PMI collapsed to 47.3 - the lowest sinec March 2009. Despite another CNY150bn liquidity injection (but the biggest strengthening of Yuan since Nov 2014 and a financial conditions tightening in FX trading), China, US, and Japanese stocks are plunging... SHCOMP -4%, Dow -280, NKY -340

Seriously, what the f##k is going on over there?

*BLAST SEEN IN CHEM. IND. ZONE IN SHANDONG, CHINA: PEOPLES DAILY

This is the second explosion in Shandong, which both follow the huge and deadly explosion in Tianjin.

First Trump, now this...!?

Amid the Ukraine government's vote for constitutional changes to give its eastern regions a special status (that it hopes will blunt their separatist drive) protests have turned deadly as RT reports 50 Ukrainian nation guards have been injured in a greande blast near parliament in Kiev.

Yesterday, the FT triumphantly proclaimed: "Beijing abandons large-scale share purchases", and that instead of manipulating stocks directly as China did last week on Thursday and Friday, China would instead focus on punishing sellers, shorters, and various other entities. We snickered, especially after the Shanghai Composite opened down 2% and dropped as low as 4% overnight. Just a few hours later we found out that our cynical skepticism was again spot on: the moment the afternoon trading session opened, the "National Team's" favorite plunge protection trade, the SSE 50 index of biggest companies, went super-bid and ramped from a low of 2071 to close 140 points higher, ending trading with a last minute government-facilitated surge, and pushing the Composite just 0.8% lower after trading down as much as -4.0%.

Update: So much for the "no more intervention" - CHINA SAID TO ORDER BROKERAGES TO BOOST STOCK MARKET SUPPORT

A busy weekend in Asia was dominated by mayhem in Malaysia, and witch-huntery in China. Chinese authorities began a wide-scale crackdown on rumor-mongerers, arrested journalists, and even detained a regulator for insider trading, as they lifted loan caps on the banking system at the same as withdrawing (verbally) support for the stock market. China strengthen the Yuan fix by 0.15% to 6.3893 - this is the biggest 2-day strengthening of the Yuan fix since Nov 2014. Then just to rub some more salt in the wounds, Goldman cut China growth expectations to 6.4% and 6.1% respectively for the next 2 years. Chinese stocks are opening modestly lower (SHCOMP -3.3%).

"This feels like 2008 all over again," as NPR reports the latest Iowa Poll showed Sanders just 7 points behind Hillary Clinton, who leads 37 to 30 percent among likely Democratic caucus-goers. Why 2008? As NPR notes, that's when a heavily favored Clinton stumbled and lost to Barack Obama, then a young senator whose middle name, Hussein, was the same as a dictator the U.S. had just overthrown and whose last name rhymed with America's Public Enemy No. 1. And while the socialist septuagenarian continues to surge, Hillary faces yet another 'issue', as Yahoo Tech reports, 1 million (or one third) of her 'apparent' Twitter followers are fake.

The week that passed has left many of the so-called “smart crowd” flummoxed, disheveled, dismayed, and disrobed from their expensive facades of “expert insightful analysis.” It seems all that “expert” as well as “insight” wasn’t all it was made out to be. In less than a week: historic records weren’t only broken – they were smashed to smithereens. And the one’s that were the most historic? They weren’t set for positive things.